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2 April 2017

V Reviews - Koro-Sensei Quest: 12 ways to say: It's not funny

Chibi spin-off shows of popular manga/anime is not an uncommon thing in anime. There's been spin-off of dozens of popular anime: Shakugan no Shana, A Certain Magical Index, the Fate Franchise, Haruhi Suzumiya and so on and so on.

But while most of them are direct parodies of the main show, often mocking the anime tropes that are occurring in the main series, Koro-Sensei Quest takes on a whole different approach and creates an entirely new series with its chibi characters.

But while it's very hard to critique the typical chibi-show spin-offs, Koro-Sensei is different because it tries to be its own thing... and fails at it.

Let's review this so I can forget about it.

V Reviews: Koro-Sensei Quest

Backstory

Well, ever since the popularity of the main series started spiking in 2015, somebody apparently had the brilliant idea to start creating a spin-off manga. Who? Probably somebody at Shueisha. Why? Marketing for the main series and obviously also Merchandise! In other words: Low cost - easy money.

So it should come as no surprise that Shueisha enlisted a B-list author and mangaka for this title. And yes, I'm serious it when I say B-list. No I'm not saying that these people are untalented or anything; they just haven't had any success as of yet (and thus are very cheap to employ). It's a common practice for publishers when handling spin-off manga series to enlist unsuccessful or rookie mangaka and writers. The titles aren't supposed to be amazing, they only serve as advertisement or filler. If they suck (they usually do), the series is either published irregularly or ends up being short-lived. If it somehow DOES end up being successful, it's a win-win for both Shueisha and the author-artist team!

So not to long after being enlisted, the team of Kizuku Watanabe & Jō Aoto created Koro-Sensei Q, which ended up being published in the bimonthly magazine Saikyo Jump (which mostly consists of spin-off manga's like Dragon Ball SD, One Piece Party and others.

In November of 2016, Studio Lerche (who did the original Assassination Classroom) animated a movie of said spin-off series, and then launched a 12-episode ONA in Winter of 2017.

Story

The "alternate" story of Assassination Classroom is this time set in an RPG world, with many classic RPG tropes. The Big Bad that needs to be defeated is still Koro-sensei and our heroes still are part of a class (somewhat), aimed to take down Koro-sensei.

And that's it. What follows are antics mirroring events from the original series, but in a parody variant with chibi-style characters and an RPG setting.

Characters

Same as Assassination Classroom, but in Chibi form with RPG-style outfits.

The cast, in one of the more detailed moments

Animation & Sound

The ONA is a short style anime, which means limited animation and sound. And it shows. Certain scenes can be done really beautifully... but those are uncommon to say the least

One of the better moments.

But in general the art is limited (to say it in a nice way). The backgrounds are just... cheap. And most background characters are reduced to basic shapes (come on, look at LuLuco to see what IS possible).

This image appears for near a minute on screen with only two instances of actual animation

The sound varies between bland and just horrible. The OP is "okay", but the ED is HORRIBLE! I get that it's supposed to be a typical 8-bit track playing to mimic a classic RPG. But the sound mixing is so bad it was horrendous to listen to (don't listen to it with headphones, SERIOUSLY!).

The only good thing about the sound is the return of the original voice cast (thank god). At least those great voices brought some joy to an otherwise strained (and stained) production.

Why I hate this piece of trash

Some people may forgive this series because it's more of the Assassination Classroom they love and they realize that since the original story has ended in a proper manner (which is good!), we'd never see anything of these characters again.

But can you really accept THIS?! As a fan of the original series, I'm offended by this piece of trash. In the entirety of the 12 episodes, I genuinely laughed like 3 or 4 times. You know when? When the creators actually bothered to make an original, unexpected joke! So why couldn't they do more of that?!

No, instead we get run-of-the-mill humor that re-use old jokes from the original anime, turn characters into either stereotypes or reduce them to one single joke gimmick (the bathtub? Seriously?! That's not even your joke! That's a Shaft joke!)

I like comedies! I like humor! I love to laugh at good jokes or even the next Gintama episode (I really really need to catch up). So a series that fails to make me laugh most of the time is just plain bad.

You may like it, but I can only advice you to ignore that this ever existed.

Final verdict

My final ranking is a 5/10! It's passable for a short animation, but that's it.

Only watch it if you're really curious. But in all honesty, you can easily ignore it, since there is nothing of value here. Watch the original 2 seasons of Assassination Classroom instead! Those are MUCH better than this waste of time!